


threshold (the ache and the ruin)

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Ch14 resolution scene, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, In which Cloud makes many choices, and also makes no choices at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24102238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: He'd never once hesitated to reach out and catch her. It was instinct, sealed to his soul by a promise he'd made to her years ago. Reaching for her was automatic. Or at least it had been.Cloud's instincts come up short in the flower garden the night after the Plate falls.Set during the Ch. 14 resolution scene with Tifa.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 29
Kudos: 174





	threshold (the ache and the ruin)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This is my first ever Cloti/FFVII fic. I've been a fan since the original but the remake (which I feel like I've been waiting for for 84 years) reignited my childhood love for Cloud and Tifa, and I found myself with the urge to write. This is the first result. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please enjoy.

_“You’re the ache and the ruin, the mess I fell into without hesitation.”_ \-- Nitya Prakash

 _“Thresholds are dangerous places, neither here nor there, and walking across one is like stepping off the edge of a cliff in the naive faith that you’ll sprout wings halfway down. You can’t hesitate, or doubt. You can’t fear the in-between.” --_ Alix E. Harrow, _The Ten Thousand Doors of January_

He’d never once hesitated to reach out and catch her. To steady her. To pull her away from harm or to cradle her as they jumped from a moving train. His hand was always ready, never far. It wasn’t even that it was easy. It was more than that. Instinct. Something burned into his bones on a night under the stars a hundred lifetimes ago.

Reaching for her was automatic. Or it had been, until she was crying against his chest in a garden on the other side of a disaster they’d failed to prevent.

When she had moved toward him, eyes downcast and fists clenched, he’d been rooted to the spot, watching her like she was a train barreling towards him in slow motion. A train he knew he couldn’t — _wouldn’t —_ stop. His heart hammered in his chest, counting the beats it took for her forehead to press against him, and when she made contact it hit hard, like she’d punched him in the chest. Knocked the air from his lungs, stopped his heart. 

He stood frozen and tried to process it all: the weight of her head on his chest, the brush of her hair against his jaw, the way her breath warmed the wool of his shirt and the skin beneath as she sobbed out, “They took everything from us. Again.”

Her shoulders shook as she broke down. His voice stuck in his throat, though what he would have even said, he didn’t know. 

He didn’t know what to do. 

There were no monsters trying to harm her, no slum rats picking a fight. No threat that could be handled with a swing of his sword. Just grief, raw and sharp and deep enough to drown in. And that wasn’t something he could pull her away from. He couldn’t rescue her from this. His instincts failed him. 

The realization made him sick with shame.

Every gasp she made was a sucker punch to the gut, knocking him off-balance for the briefest moment until he steadied again. He chose to look out ahead of him, unable to bear the tear tracks on her cheeks. His eyes cast about the landscape unfocused, desperate for an answer, a solution, anything that would make it better, make _her_ better.

And then her hands came up and her fingers curled into his shirt, striking another blow that staggered him. His hand came up to steady them, like they’d actually been knocked back — but then it hung useless in the air when he remembered _no_ , they were safe here, if only for the night.

His concern for her grew the more she wept. She was the strongest person he knew. He’d never seen her so— 

He could’ve kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. 

Tifa, who was the pillar of support for everyone she knew. Who never shied away from helping someone in need, even if it cost her more than what she could spare. Who owned and ran her own bar in the slums, who allowed a group of radicals to use that bar as a headquarters, who fed them and mended them when necessary, who looked after the 4 year old daughter of a gun-wielding eco-extremist with an anger management problem because she saw the good in everyone. A woman who put everyone before herself, always. 

The question wasn’t “ _when had she last cried?”_ but “ _when had she last let_ _herself?”_

His hands still hovered at his side, empty, unsure — until instinct kicked in and hesitation evaporated. 

His arms went around her and pulled her tight against him. Her hands moved to rest on his shoulder, his chest in response, her fingertips pressing into his skin like she was holding on for dear life. He bent his head, exhaled a shaky breath, let his arms settle more firmly across her back. Her breath caught and hiccuped, and his shoulder was damp with tears, and maybe it was his imagination, wishful thinking, but she was leaning into him, giving him her weight, and it made him tighten his hold a little more. 

They’d been this close together before, but always under different circumstances — the kind that usually involved heavy gunfire or explosions or monsters that wouldn’t stay down. But stationary? Breathing the same air because they wanted to and not because they were crammed into narrow sewer tunnels? Holding her as a comfort, for connection…? He closed his eyes, tried to keep his breathing even. His heart was pounding under her hand. She could probably feel it.

He took a deep breath, let it out. His breath made the dark strands by her ear shift, and he felt more than heard the hitch in her crying. Swallowing, he tilted his face toward hers and his nose brushed against the skin of her neck. He inhaled lavender soap and clean sheets and the scent of Sector 7 that she hadn’t been able to scrub away. Her fingers clenched on his shoulder, twisted in the wool of his shirt. His gaze softened and he let it wander down the fall of her hair, thinking about how it would feel under his bare hands.

He wanted to anchor them there in that moment, with her in his arms, where she was safe, where he wasn’t an idiot that was constantly—

“Cloud…”

Her voice was quiet, almost apologetic. 

“Hm?”

Firmer this time. “Cloud, you’re hurting me…”

It took a second to register what she’d said, but then he was backing away, embarrassed but reluctant to let go. The absence of her opened a chasm in his chest that hadn’t been there before.

She wiped at her eyes, not looking up at him. That was enough to tell him that he’d messed up. He’d hurt her. His jaw clenched and he glared down at his boots.

“It’s stupid,” she said, and he glanced over at her. She was staring down at the ground, her brows drawn together and her mouth quirked up like she hadn’t just been sobbing her heart out. “I know crying is a waste of time.”

His head snapped up. “That’s not true,” he told her, and he meant it.

A breath left her lips and she finally met his eyes. Her nose and cheeks were red and her eyes were puffy from crying. But her gaze was soft, and her mouth turned up at the corners in a smile that he wasn't sure he deserved.

“Thank you,” she told him, and the look in her eyes and the smile on her lips carved themselves into his bones.

He wanted to tell her to ease up, or else there wouldn’t be any space left on him for others to mark.

He wanted to tell her to stop looking at him like that, because it made him want to leave tomorrow before she and the others woke.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t know why he got so confused when he was around Aerith, that something about the flower girl was calling out to him and he didn’t know how or where or if it fit next to what he felt for her.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry, even though the list was too long by now to know exactly what for.

He wanted to take his gloves off and hers, too, and press their palms together, callous to callous, to see if they lined up.

He wanted to hold her again, because holding her had been the first thing he’d done since coming to Midgar that actually felt right. That felt _real_.

He wanted to, but he didn’t. 

Because they had too many other things to worry about. 

Because they had to rescue the last of an ancient race that had powers beyond their reckoning.

Because they had to stop a massive corporation from killing the Planet for a profit.

Because they had to exact revenge.

Because he needed answers to questions he couldn’t understand.

So instead, he met her eyes and nodded, hoping that if not now, then maybe in another life he’d get the chance to tell her, show her how important she was to him.

Maybe in another life, instead of always fighting for it, they’d be lucky enough to get to live it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Feel free to find me on tumblr @kotaface if you'd like to chat or flail or scream about these two idiots with me. 
> 
> Cheers!  
> ~Kota


End file.
